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Features

'Infamous': Capote, but no copycat

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published September 17, 2006

TORONTO - Douglas McGrath and Toby Jones have heard all about that other Truman Capote movie, the one that threatened to make theirs look like a copycat or an afterthought.

Jones stars as Capote in director McGrath's Infamous, a portrait of the author's dark quest to create the true crime novel In Cold Blood. Infamous arrives a year after the Academy Award-winning Capote, which centers on the same era in the man's life.

As Capote did last year, Infamous is making the rounds at the Toronto International Film Festival and other industry showcases before its Oct. 13 debut in theaters.

The two movies were in the works at roughly the same time, with filming on Capote beginning a few months before Infamous, enough lead time for the version starring Philip Seymour Hoffman to make it to theaters first.

McGrath, who adapted his version from George Plimpton's book Truman Capote, said people who have seen both movies tell him they had not expected to like his but came away surprised by how different they are.

"It wasn't as backhanded as saying, 'I didn't think your movie would be good, and I was wrong,' " McGrath said. "It was, 'I didn't think there was a reason for your movie, and now I really see there is one.' "

Infamous treads plenty of the same ground as Capote, following the author from his glitzy New York hangouts to cold, drab Kansas as he researches the murders of a farm family for a magazine piece that grew into In Cold Blood.

Capote is a sober story; Infamous opens almost as a black comedy before turning down the gloomy passages that clouded Capote's life and made him a wreck of a man.

Neither McGrath nor Jones have seen Capote, saying they will wait until they put their movie to rest to catch it.

[Last modified September 17, 2006, 06:07:44]